


Oh, Dr. Steinman

by noisystar



Category: BioShock
Genre: Fontaine Becoming Atlas, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3708581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisystar/pseuds/noisystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the song Dr. John by Mika.</p><p>With a Fontaine twist.</p><p>
  <i>They say I'm a big heartbreaker <br/>But Doctor, I'd never hurt ya <br/>It isn't that obvious? </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, Dr. Steinman

**Author's Note:**

> I feel bad posting this before there's even really a good ending point, but it's yet another piece that has been sitting around for quite a while and I would love to have the time to continue. At least I'll put this bit out and see what the world might think of it. Big plans ahead for this one...

A deliberate sweep of his scalpel, gleaming as a brush loaded with paint, opened up a boring skin canvas and from it spilled thousands of glittering red rubies. He cut and cut, slicing away the threads of the tired canvas, revealing that underneath a homely figure were treasures, sparkling even more brilliantly than diamonds through the head mirror(1) Dr. Steinman looked through, the illumination device becoming a jeweler's loupe before his eyes, and he, a jeweler of traded flesh.

But the moment of angelic epiphany eluded him; all the necessary cuts had been made and the scalpel trembled in his hand, half-supped, as he laid it to its metal bed with its dainty bait.

Dr. Steinman looked from his depraved patient, her face naive and asleep, while through delicate incision-shaped keyholes beauty gleamed with the radiance of an untapped diamond mine. “Nurse, the ADAM.” The young woman passed a syringe to him with the promptness of a girl anxiously awaiting the swan song(2). Dr. Steinman wanted to tell her, but there will be no beautiful climax for this patient, just the same as the rest. You, and myself, are cheated of it. What is the purpose of cutting and revealing, if we are only to stitch and cover again?

Dr. Steinman administered the blazing red ADAM from its syringe. It was resplendent as the patient's current face; if only he could capture the face now, as it was, as it could be—there must be something more in that untapped mine, something he could reach if he just _picked_. With ADAM, he assisted the genetics of his patients to accelerate the healing process and piece together flaps of skin without the archaic tarnishing of procedures such as the pedicle tube(3). Months of recovery time without the company of a mirror was reduced to days, even hours. What other implications ADAM brought to his operating table, Dr. Steinman yearned to imagine. He picked up the needle and with sutures mantled the red-jeweled meat with the delicately procured skin graft. The patient slept through it, anesthetized and oblivious, while Dr. Steinman painfully finished the procedure.

When he removed himself from the patient's side, he breathed in air that tasted foreign, as though he was being stirred from a long dream. The nurse collected the patient and as Dr. Steinman somberly peeled off his gloves, he recalled that he was not alone in this operation. He looked to the viewing window and sighed in relief that his guest had not strayed. In fact, on his face, there was a—did he dare feel this giddy hope?--dreamy expression. Dreaming, perhaps, of the same paradise that Dr. Steinman was dreaming; rubies and freedom and beauty.

He smiled as he folded his scrubs into a sanitation bin before crossing into the viewing hall. Dr. Steinman ventured a test question, amusing himself with his unlikely expectation that this man might feel the same disappointment in the extent of the procedure that he felt. “Well Mr. Fontaine, what did you think of my work?”

 

(1) head mirror is that device worn on doctor's heads (you can see it on Dr. Steinman when you fight him) used to illuminate areas being examined. It's a large mirror disc that hangs in front of your face and is strapped to your forehead, with a little hole in the middle where you look through. Light is reflected from the disc and concentrated where the hole looks to eliminate obstructing shadows. Seems to mostly be used with general examinations of eyes, ears, and nose, but Steinman wore one so eh. He was being creative.  
(2) “swan song” comes from the belief that a swan sings as it dies. The term is used to describe a final performance, i.e. by a retiring actor.  
(3) The pedicle tube is a surgical practice invented by Harold Gillies:a reconstructive technique in which the skin and soft tissue to be used for the flap is formed into a tubular pedicle and moved from the source to the target site by anchoring at both ends, periodically severing one end anchoring it closer to the flap target site. As antibiotics had not yet been invented when this procedure was developed, wrapping the flap in a tube was important because infection was reduced. Look it up for some gross pictures.


End file.
